Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Giant Shark a Rare Find

If you thought the movie 'Jaws' was scary, imagine what oceanographers thought when they saw a shark bigger than their submarine, swimming just feet away from them.

It happened in Hawaiian waters just off the coast of Moloka'i. It's a rare deep sea ocean find captured on video off the northeast coast of the island. Most sharks are known to have just five gills and although some have been spotted before with six, never before like this giant.

You can clearly see all six gills. Professors from UH Manoa and HPU estimate this monster of a shark to be more than 17 feet in length.

Dr. Eric Vetter of Hawaii Pacific Univeristy was on board the submarine and said, "We're pretty much blown away. Usually we're seeing small eels, small crustaceans, shrimp, things called anthropods, but in this case we had what appeared to be a 17 feet to 18 feet, six gill shark and there was a lot of excitement in the submarine."

Vetter has been on many dives in his career and says this is definitely the biggest one he's ever seen, or heard of in Hawaiian waters.